EMDR Therapy

Break free from the things that are holding you back.

Memories and past events have an overwhelming effect on the way you live your life.

You feel the pain of the past every day as if it all just happened yesterday.

You can’t disrupt the thoughts or break the thought patterns.

This results from a traumatic experience that keeps pulling you back into your past.

It’s causing anxiety, stress, and depression. Maybe even panic attacks, nightmares, and a general feeling of unsettledness. You’ve tried everything, but nothing works.

Trauma is one of the most defining and painful aspects of our life experiences.

Your life is slipping through your hands…
The old memories haunt you.

You tell yourself you should be happy – or at least happier – but you’re not. You tell yourself you should get over what happened in the past, but you can’t.

You try to convince yourself that you’re “over it,” but that’s not working either.

It feels like you’re losing it – your mind, sanity, emotional well-being, and health has declined.

Most people tend to bury the turbulent and overwhelming sensations inside and don’t revisit them consciously. However, you should not simply sweep trauma under the rug and ignore it.

The following are linked to unresolved trauma: anxiety and panic attacks, phobias, addictions, self-esteem, performance anxiety, depression, sleep problems, complicated grief, stress, and pain relief. If you are experiencing some or all these symptoms, EMDR therapy can help.

Deeply disturbing events…

Trauma can have long-lived emotional and physical impacts on your life.

Trauma interrupts your body’s natural state of balance, freezing you in a state of fear, tension, and hyperarousal. Even after the traumatic experience is over, you can experience extreme anxiety or depression… or may have ongoing problems with relationships and self-esteem.

You may feel like it’s impossible to escape the grip of trauma, but we can free you from it with the right therapeutic interventions.

With the right therapy, you can restore a sense of safety and control in your life.

EMDR Therapy for PTSD, Trauma, and More

While trauma is difficult and painful to deal with, there are many treatments that can offer remarkable benefits for people suffering from trauma, especially PTSD.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for PTSD and other disorders has, in some ways, overturned decades of research that had branded many types of PTSD as incurable.

EMDR therapy is a comprehensive and safe approach and may be used to treat many symptoms or disorders, including the following:

• Complex Trauma and PTSD
• Anxiety
• Panic Attacks
• Depression
• Phobias
• Obsessions and Compulsions
• Eating Disorders

What is EMDR Therapy?

EMDR therapy uses eye movements or other kinds of bilateral stimulation in order to process distressing and painful memories and beliefs.

The EMDR Institute states that EMDR is a psychotherapy treatment that was initially designed to alleviate the distress and grief associated with traumatic memories and negative memories. This therapy helps improve mental health and well-being.

EMDR therapy is an evidence-based and reliable treatment used to heal and recover from traumatic and painful memories. However, unlike conventional talk therapies, EMDR uses eye movements in order to bilaterally stimulate your brain to process and resolve traumatic events or memories by unblocking the emotions and then reprogramming your brain’s mental processes.

Past, Present, and Future

EMDR therapy at Therapists of Southern California focuses on your past, present, and future. Specifically, EMDR treatment considers the disturbing memories and associated events in the past, the current experiences that are causing grief and distress, and the attention and support needed to achieve positive and healthier future experiences.

Scientific studies and research have shown that with EMDR therapy, you can experience the various benefits of therapy considerably quicker than with older techniques. This allows your mind to heal and recover from mental trauma as soon as your body can heal from physical trauma.

What is Trauma?

Many Californians experience some type of trauma in their life, and many don’t even recognize their symptoms or experience as traumatic. Psychological trauma is often the result of extraordinarily stressful and overwhelming events. These events can shatter your sense of security and peace and cause you to feel helpless, vulnerable, and alone.

When you experience traumatic stress, it affects your brain physiologically, in turn, impacting your behavior, physiology, and mood.

When distress or shock from a disturbing event remains, the troubling images, emotions, and thoughts may create unpleasant feelings of being back in that moment.

With trauma counseling and therapy, you can reprocess negative beliefs and thoughts about yourself and replace them with positive ones.

This will decrease distressing emotions and make way for feelings of contentment, calmness, and joy.

The trauma counselors and EMDR specialists at Therapists of Southern California are certified to conduct this therapy.

Trauma Signs and Symptoms

The most common signs and symptoms patients experience after a traumatic or disturbing event include the following:

• Difficulty concentrating
• Intrusive and unwanted memories
• Mood swings and irritability
• Withdrawal and isolation
• Fear and anxiety
• Feeling depressed or disconnected
• Insomnia and nightmares
• Extreme fatigue
• Flashbacks
• Muscle tension and chronic pain
• Hyper-vigilance

EMDR is an effective treatment for the many manifestations of trauma.

The basis of suffering after trauma has to do with how our memories are stored in the brain. It’s on those stored memories that Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) works.

Instead of talking in detail about a negative experience, you quietly think about the event while both hemispheres of your brain are stimulated back and forth.

You won’t re-experience the event (as in exposure therapy) or spend hours a week doing homework (as in cognitive-behavioral therapy). The healing takes place naturally within your brain.

EMDR will unblock emotional processes and negative emotional cycles. You will be (in a sense) reprogramming your brain. All you have to do is show up.

EMDR can help you process and heal from any trauma. Whether it happened in childhood, your time in the military, or some other context, EMDR can free you from simple to the most complex PTSD triggers.

We Provide Professional and Safe EMDR Therapy and Counseling in California

The team at Therapists of Southern California understands the sensitive and unique nature of working with trauma patients.

Our EMDR specialists and therapists in California will work with you in a warm, sensitive, and compassionate manner at a safe pace that is suitable for you.

Therapists of Southern California aims to leverage your strengths and support and guide you in working through challenges and difficulties.

EMDR Treatment – The Process of Treating Trauma 

As trauma is a unique experience for every person, our therapists and mental health professionals know it is important to start with an objective evaluation where they identify the triggers associated with the experiences that have caused the symptoms and signs the patient is enduring.

This comprehensive trauma assessment will help guide the therapist and counselors in developing an effective treatment program to support you through the symptoms and help you recover.

After performing the assessment and collecting the objective information needed to effectively treat the various symptoms of trauma as well as your response to triggers, you will work with our experienced and compassionate team members to start a treatment program that will offer psychoeducation on grounding skills, coping skills, and the ability to better process or reprocess traumatic experiences through EMDR.

EMDR therapy uses a three-pronged approach:

• The traumatic memories and related beliefs are accessed and processed with new, adaptive information
• Current trauma triggers are desensitized; and
• Future events are re-imagined in a capable, peaceful, and functional manner.

EMDR treatment at Therapists of Southern California is effective for singular traumas and complex, repeated traumas. Trauma therapy may be used for recent traumatic situations or events from your childhood. EMDR therapy can help heal the emotional and psychological distress, cognitive beliefs, thought patterns, and physiological responses linked to trauma.

Process and Recover with Safe EMDR Treatment

Through EMDR therapy at Therapists of Southern California, you can transform the meaning of painful events on an emotional level.

This allows you to truly heal and recover and lead a better life.  EMDR therapy for trauma helps you heal from past wounds and helps you create a sense of empowerment as you gradually work to overcome the obstacle.

Psychoeducation

Education about trauma and its impact on your body/mind and coping skills

Emotional Regulation

Identify, deal with, and stabilize unpleasant emotions and feelings

Cognitive Processing

Work through intrusive and unpleasant thoughts and memories. Lower trauma-avoidant behaviors and learn to shift negative beliefs into positive ones

Manage Hyper-Arousal

Lower levels of physiological arousal associated with stressful experiences and trauma triggers in order to feel safer and calmer

Foster Trust and Resilience

Restore a sense of trust and safety and reclaim your true power

Distressing memories can be transformed.

EMDR allows your brain to process distressing memories naturally so that they no longer produce suffering when remembered. After successful treatment with EMDR therapy…

Your affective distress is relieved…

Your negative beliefs are reformulated, and…

Your physiological arousal is reduced.

EMDR has been proven effective… and fast when compared to other trauma treatments…

You can actively free yourself from trauma in a shorter time compared to traditional therapy.

Why Choose Us for Trauma and PTSD Treatment

EMDR therapy is a highly-effective and safe treatment option for patients experiencing symptoms and signs of trauma and PTSD, but EMDR-trained clinicians and professionals can be hard to come by.

We are proud to provide high-quality EMDR supported by trauma specialists, therapists, and couples counselors who can guide and support the patient and everybody else in their lives.

At Therapists of Southern California, our team takes an individualized and personalized approach to trauma therapy in California.

If you don’t make peace with your past…

… it will keep showing up in your present.

We want better for you. We want you to live life freely with less distress and fear. EMDR can truly help you with that.

If you have experienced a traumatic event and are struggling to resume your “normal” life, our trauma therapists and EMDR experts can help.

With convenient telehealth services in California, our team can answer your questions and help you recover and heal.

Let’s transform your thoughts, feelings, and reactions…

If you are interested in EMDR, we can explain more about how it works and how it can help your specific issues. Give us a call or text us for your free consultation: (949) 245-7442